Discuss DOG BONE on the rearend housing,,is it important!? on AllFordMustangs.com, the place for Mustang enthusiasts.

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I just changed my axle today, and saw a snag when I try to fill the dif with gear oil, the "dog bone" bolt was on the way, so I took it off, then started thinking, do I really NEED this piece there, is it important to leave it there... Its pretty heavy.. I have a convertible, so every once I can take out from the car would help. I also have the FR aluminum driveshaft already.

So, should I leave it off the car, or do I need it there for something important?

I would leave it on and just have one less burger....lol. It's heavy and mounted on rubber to absorb vibrations. In the scheme of things it is not that heavy and there is no way your car will be faster by any measure if you take it off. Vibration is the enemy not only of your butt in the seat but all of the bearings in the rear and the tranny. You wouldn't take off your harmonic balancer, would you?

They're usually paired with the gear set, so if you change gears you've negated the intended use of it. You can lose it and not notice a thing. I took mine off years ago and no vibrations happened because of it.

it actualy came out off my stock rear, when i got my TC rearen, it didnt came with that, so i pulled it off the stock and mounted it to the TC.
with it, i actualy feel extreme vibration when traveling 75+mph!

I dumped my dogbone (9lb) a while ago and it made no difference. It's important to keep the pinion snubber and mounting bracket though.
I often wondered if the real purpose of the dogbone was just to provide a jacking point under the rear diff.

I also took mine off, no difference at all. Remember to leave the aluminum piece it bolts to on the diff. It acts as a bump stop. I didn't know that when I took mine off and my car rode like a brick **** wagon.

Well, lets just get scientific then and maybe we can put it to bed. (but I doubt it)

Lets say that your car weighs 3200 lb. Don't argue with me because a few hundred here or there with this number will not make a difference in this calculation. Lets say we weigh 200 lbs when we get into the car. If we can agree that the hated piece weighs 10 lbs, you have lowered the mass of your car by a whopping 0.29 percent, or about the same as a gallon and a half of gas. Note that this does not correspond to a proportional decrease in ET.

All things being equal, you will accelerate faster without it....0.29 percent faster in any given gear (F=MA). You will not notice it. Your friends and neighbors will not notice it. You will have removed something that you can't see, can't hear, doesn't bother you (except when you fill your rear) and may actually serve the purpose it was designed for. You would be far, far better served by not filling up your gas tank or getting an aluminum spare.

Obviously, if you have a track-only car and you are dying to shave fractions of hundreths of a second you may want to do it. Not sure you could measure the difference there either. On a street car, I guess it sounds good that your lightening her up, but you've done nothing but dismantle a vibration dampening system.

Maybe there is someone out there with an ET estimator program that can tell us the difference between a similiar car at 3400 lbs and 3390lbs?